A famous quote for people who reflect on their yester-years is ‘The Past is Tense, the Future is Perfect’ which tells us, with the use of some Grammar, not to dwell too much on what’d happened once upon a time in our lives. Yet some memories of the school days often cannot be erased so easily and looking back, appear funny, outrageous, almost surreal in today’s context !
This story is from the mid-1960s (yes, six decades ago !). As young boys we loved our school and classmates, though only like-minded ones became our close friends. There was also an influx of new students joining the school from time to time (mid-session entry was allowed in special cases) and we old regulars looked to entrants with interest one looks at newer specimens. We’d get amused if they were onerously saddled with names of great men !
The story gets fascinating with the arrival of a jovial & rotund young gent with the proverbial ‘Big Bang’. In those days, our lunch break was full of fun and frolic and apart from a small counter serving snacks near the portico, we also had an ice-cream vendor coming with his cart. As frugality was our motto, the only ice-creams we could afford was the humble ‘Orange Bar’. But our fortunes (in terms of ‘Kwality Ice-creams’) were about to change…
The new entrant apparently looked simple at first, but soon showed a very generous streak by inviting class mates to expensive ‘Choc Bars’ every day during the lunch break and would take out wads of notes to pay the Vendor. With fairly strict ‘no-frills’ upbringing we had never seen such benevolence. Soon word got around school about the ‘Boy-Wonder’ with a Midas touch and like all such ‘opulent’ people, he had a large following waiting on him.
But there’s always suspicion on too much of a good thing. When the matter got reported to his parents about his reckless spending it was found he was dipping into large amounts of cash lying in drawers of his successful Doctor Father. The matter was hushed up as it involved a young boy’s future. That was then. Later in life, he went on to become a successful entrepreneur.
I often feel how easily we had all jumped on the band-wagon of freebies and had not considered how one so young could have huge sums to spend. Any similarity to what’s happening all around us today, is purely coincidental !
Working on Living 